


Original Sin

by FinalOwen



Category: Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical - Steinman
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Origin Story, Prequel, Start Of Darkness, Underage Drinking, slight songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:03:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14882906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinalOwen/pseuds/FinalOwen
Summary: What turned Falco from another wasted youth to the driven, dictatorial Commander in Chief of Obsidian? Maybe influence from above, maybe jealousy, or maybe just the quest for a new kind of thrill...





	Original Sin

Falco is 42 years old. He’s the commander in chief of Obsidian, lord of all he surveys. His armies stalk the streets, his enemies flee and scatter before him. His loving wife… His wife stands at his side, a first lady for his broken city. And his daughter Raven will soon be 18. However did he make it this far?

It was long ago and far away…

* * *

Falco is 16 years old. And his father is yelling at him, again. About how grateful he should be for everything he’s given him. About how he should take his life and his responsibilities more seriously, and dedicate himself to service to the city, to the gods. About how he should stop hanging around with those punk kids. But the very next night, he’s out among them again, his father’s words forgotten. 

They’re dancing, running through the rubble of the ruined streets with the band of kids who call themselves ‘lost boys’. And his best friend is at his side, a shock of blonde hair hiding piercing blue eyes that blaze like frozen fire. They cause a little chaos, they pick a few fights, and before long they always end up in the bar. The Dive, it’s called. It’s a wild place, where one moment you’ll be avoiding macho-looking mud wrestlers, the next weaving through a dancefloor past dancers in costumes of every period. Everything about it feels thrown together, a little slice of everything the town had to offer in its heyday preserved even as the bombs fell. But to Falco, it feels like home, way more than the crumbling tower his father built as a testament to his own ego.

Each weekend, they seem to end up doing the same things. Every Saturday night, they drink until they have the confidence to take on the world. (Not technically legal, but more and more the old rules seem not to matter as much. With whole generations sent off to the war, all that are left in the city are those too young to fight yet, those too old to fight any more, and a middle ground trying to avoid the culture clash as much as they can. Not many care to divide between the young and the too young, which just makes the city more of a death trap for those who aren’t careful.) Every Saturday night, they dance until they can’t any more. Usually at some point, Strat ends up singing to Falco in a way that’s somehow both over the top but still ridiculously earnest. And every Saturday night, they end up flirting with anyone who’ll put up with them. Especially the redhead that’s turned up to the Dive a few times now, the one that he can’t seem to take his eyes off of...

Life is good. And Falco knows that it’s going to be like this forever.

* * *

Falco is barely 17, and he’s desperate for just a taste of paradise. She’s there at the Dive most nights now, and they’re usually both right there alongside her. She’s the first one he’s met who can outdrink him, and even when she’s nearly falling over, she can still offer the dryest humour he’s ever known, cutting down his every advance with a clever line. But it doesn’t stop him trying. He wants her. Needs her. 

And on one hot summer night, he finally gets everything he wants, but somehow things change more than he could have expected.

His father isn’t impressed. After he meets Sloane, he calls his son into his office, and lambasts him for bringing her into his home. A drunk, he calls her, and that’s probably the most polite term he uses that night. He tells Falco to get rid of her, and he sheepishly says ‘no’. Probably the first time he’s explicitly said no to his patriarch, despite his many rebellions.

Eyes narrow in his direction. “Why not?”

“Because I love her.” Falco says, but the words sound hollow when he says them to a man who’s never seemed to care about love, whether romantic or familial.

“And?” comes the mocking reply. “She’s no good for you, or your career.”

“And… I made a vow.”

At that point, any levity left in his father’s cold demeanour vanishes, and he rounds on his teenage son, grasping him by the lapels.

“What kind of vow?”

And he explains to him. About how he promised to love her until the end of time.

After what seems like hours of tense silence shrunken into moments, his father spits out the word ‘fool’. Then he rants and raves about the danger of making vows, how stupid he’s been, how one wrong word can doom him, how the Mother Superior has warned him about the perils of promise. He says something about the gods, and faeries, and Falco zones out. His father’s religious beliefs have always bored him, but the old man’s fervour is undeniable.

“You were lucky you didn’t waste your word on anything meaningful. You can keep the girl around, she shouldn’t hurt things too much… Just be less foolish from now on. We have work to do.”

* * *

Falco is 18 years old, and for the first time, something other than his father has him shaken. Everything seems to be pushing him further away from his friends. Strat seems more distant when they’d been closer than brothers, more than friends. Maybe it’s Sloane, maybe the rings on their fingers symbolise a little bit of regular, structured life that Strat’s never aspired to. Maybe it’s jealousy. Maybe it’s that he’s pouring so much of himself into the gang.

Yes, they’re not just ‘lost boys’ any more. There’s something wrong with Strat. Some issue with his DNA, and he’s not aging any more. He’s stuck at 18, and he’s found others who are the same. They’re now calling themselves ‘The Lost’, and Falco is there at their side, but something in the back of his mind is asking ‘what if you’re not like them?’. He’s 18 now, this is the moment of truth, will he be one of them forever? Or has genetics decided a different fate for him?

And his father is pushing him harder to achieve his potential. He’s rising through the ranks of the security forces, money greasing palms to get him into higher and higher office. His father talks to the newspapers about the sterling job he’s doing, cleansing Obsidian of the cowards and objectors who avoided the war. Falco doesn’t care about that, otherwise his father would be the first to go, but then he’d used money, not morality, to find a way out. It’s not ideology or philosophy that drives the young man, but he’s getting a taste for power, and as the targets change, he takes to the work with increased zeal. There’s something about the fear when his militia comes bursting in with their skull-like masks that excites him like nothing has since those first headlong days in the Dive. 

He’s taken to interrogating suspects in the lonely caverns below the tower. Both for the atmosphere, and because they know where they are. They know who he is, how powerful his family is. They know they might never get out, that they might disappear forever… Soon, his first kill gives him a rush like he’s never known before. But it’s not enough to make the boredom go away for long...

* * *

Falco is 22 years old, and his world has turned upside down. Almost literally. Someone or something has caused a cataclysm, and the whole city has been swept out to sea. As his father pours money into constructing vast walls to keep the ocean waters from sinking them all, he gives his son a new duty. The city is becoming lawless, and he has one goal. To eliminate the gangs.

Slowly but surely their sanctuaries vanish from sight as the militia do their job. Gang after gang is disappeared into his little private sanctuary beneath the tower, the ‘vaults’ as some jokingly refer to them. The Bombers are the first to go. Sloane has decided that ‘Raven’ might be a nice name for a child, and he knows he couldn’t allow that child to share their name with the gang’s noxious leader. Nobody really misses them, the brutality and the kidnappings, and Falco finds himself lauded by the press and the people alike. It’s a strange feeling, nice while it lasts, but somehow just not as satisfying as the fear.

Strat watches his old friend with caution on the rare nights when he and Sloane still make it down to the Dive. He’s seeing more of the gangs disappearing one by one. The Mermaids. The Kangs. The Renegade Angels. He’s seeing them all go, friends and foes alike, and when Falco inevitably ends up targeting one of The Lost in a drunken fracas, he steps between them, guarding the youngster from the strike of Falco’s baton.

Falco finds himself staring into those icy blue eyes, wondering if Strat can tell that his own eyes look older. If Strat knows the horrors and the wonders his eyes have seen. They don’t exchange a single word, but Falco eventually withdraws with a cocky smile. One last favour for an old friend.

The next week, Falco arrives at the Dive only to find it deserted. He looks over at the disappointment on Sloane’s face as she gazes around the empty halls, and scowls.

“You frightened them off.” she says, wounded. “You nearly attacked that kid last time, no wonder they’re gone. What if we never see them again?”

“Don’t be a fool, Sloane. You think these little shits care about you? You think they’ll be wanting to party with you when you’re in your forties and they’re still eighteen?”

He knows she’s not listening. She lives to lose herself in pleasure, and no matter how long they put up with her, it’ll never be enough. That means they’re hurting his woman. That makes it easier for him to justify the crackdowns.

* * *

Falco is 25 years old, and now his father has a new crusade, pushing his son forward as a potential new ruler for the entire city. Rallies for him march through the streets, declaring him as some sort of holy warrior that will save their city, make the gods look favourably on them. He couldn’t give a shit about that, but it proves popular. Sure, why not, he’ll lift up the good and make the bad tremble, he’ll make Obsidian great again. Remove every last trace of corruption.

He wonders if his father appreciates the irony when in his new role as Commander in Chief he has the old man dragged down into the vaults, that one major corrupting influence finally being removed. Before the bastard croaks, Falco takes pleasure in telling him that he’d promised himself he’d do this a long time ago. Vowed it, even.

The relief and elation he feels after that moment doesn’t last long. It doesn’t take much to spoil the mood. As he walks past Sloane’s room one day, he hears her humming a melody, and it’s one that he recognises instantly. It’s one that Strat used to sing to him in the old days, something about how the drummer can tell your heart what to do...

The new housing project that’s announced the next day is a rousing success for the city, but as the demolition crews move in to make the space by destroying the Dive, the pain in Sloane’s eyes drives another little wedge between them, and leaves them praying for the end of time a little bit more.

* * *

Falco is 28 years old, and he’s trying to calm down a crying child. It’s not his forte. Raven is frantically telling him about a dream, about rising waters and a storm, and reflections… He carries her over to the window, and points beyond the walls of the city to the ocean beyond.

“Look, kiddo. The sea is watching the sky. The sky is watching the sea. Nothing will ever happen. Can you say that for me?”

She recites it back to him, stutteringly, eyes still red with tears, and he pats her on the back soothingly. Sloane’s not there to help that night, she’s wandered off into the city looking for a little damnation. He wonders if they’ll ever get back to where they once were, but he suspects that chance has already gone with the wind. But they have Raven, and he knows she’ll do anything for her little girl, same as he would.

Somewhere along the line, his idea of protecting Raven turns from sensible options like hiring a nurse to keep an eye on her, to spurring the militia on to flush out and destroy the Lost, to make sure she’ll never make the mistakes he made.

Flush out. As it turns out, the opposite nearly happens. He has someone follow Sloane on one of her excursions, which leads them to the Deep End, a new hangout deep in the tunnels, the hidey hole they scurried to when the Dive was knocked down. She’s still trying to live like them, which he finds laughable, but she’s never been dumb, she knows she’s been followed, and she lets the Lost know. When the militia try to invade, some kid with a mohawk is waiting to give the signal, and the gang manages to divert the water from one of the flooded subways to literally flush the invaders out. Some of the guards drown in the attempt, and none of his men can find another route through the labyrinth that’d get them through safely.

Worst of all, from his position of safety he watches on as the kid runs back into Strat’s arms, and hears that same damn tune being sung to him.

“The beat is yours forever...”

* * *

Falco is 36 years old. He thought he might be 18 for a whole lifetime, and now he’s at double that. But he’s accomplished nearly all of his goals. He has power, ruling over the city with an iron fist. His daughter is safe, locked within the walls of the tower. He’s kept his vow with Sloane, as difficult as it can seem sometimes.

There’s just a few things that keep him from being satisfied. Strat is still out there with his little band of freaks, and none of the victories he’s achieved bring him the satisfaction of his younger days. He can’t reassemble his youth, only those moments of sadism bringing him any joy close to those days in the Dive. But it’s never enough. He wants more, and more, infinite victims, infinitesimal time.

But he’ll make do. There’s another one waiting for him in the vaults, one of the freezers who strayed too far from the pack. He can’t remember her name. Juliet? Julia? Julie? Something like that. Found in some grotty old car with torn upholstery, and dragged off by his men to be interrogated.

He clanks his bat against the cell doors as he approaches her, humming to himself, and starts to sing softly under his voice, letting it echo through the caverns.

“I’ve been looking for an original sin, one with a twist and a bit of a spin...”

He can almost feel her pulse start to race to match his, fear driving the adrenaline. After all, the beat is his forever...

“And since I’ve done all the old ones till they’ve all been done in, now I’m just looking, then I’m gone with the wind...”

They’ll forget about her, given time. They forgot about him.

“Endlessly searching for an original sin...”

**Author's Note:**

> Drawn from a few bits and pieces here, with the Dive coming from the video for Bonnie Tyler's "If You Were A Woman", our other Raven being from another rock and roll fable in Streets Of Fire, the Kangs and a few ideas about the war leaving the young and old behind from Doctor Who's Paradise Towers (it really fits surprisingly well with the Bat aesthetic), and the religion-tinged campaigns being set to "Gods" from Steinman's Neverland/the Meat Loaf cover on Braver Than We Are.


End file.
